Nonfiction is usually a pretty good reading option for me, so I have a pretty good list of titles to recommend to my readers this year. My selection is from those books I read in 2021 that I rated four to five stars. I rarely give 5 out of 5 stars to any book, and five of these got that coveted 5 out of 5 stars rating. These then are my top nonfiction selections for 2021, in no particular order:
The tale of the small company that became the Juul juggernaut and launched the e-cigarette trend. It is also the tale of Altria, a tobacco behemoth unable to innovate and losing customers to Juul. Juul basically defined the e-cigarette, and Altria was obsessed with acquiring Juul at any cost.
This is definitely one of the best books I read in 2021 overall. I also had the good fortune to listen to Danny Trejo speak during ALA Annual Virtual 2021. This was a book I was looking forward to reading since it was first announced. I rarely get excited over forthcoming books, but this was one well worth it. I definitely recommend it.
This was one of the few audiobooks I read this year. I picked up the book in part because it was mentioned in a documentary, something I often do. If you want to understand the man, his crimes, and the times when most of this happened, around the 2008 economic downturn, this book is a good option.
The story of Ross Ullbricht, creator of the dark trading website Silk Road where you can trade anything from drugs to weapons to even human parts. It was a two years saga to get him, and I was amazed they did given law enforcement at times were either incompetent or outright corrupt.
For me, this was one of the must read books of 2021. It is a well researched book that looks at how the United States' obsession with guns and firearms arms criminal gangs and drug cartels making the rest of the Americas into one of the most violent places in the world.
When I picked this up, I knew little about Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon's vice president. I knew Nixon was a serious political animal and asshole. I had no idea that Agnew was just as big if not bigger corrupt asshole than Nixon. This book presents a chapter of U.S. history that many of us not around at the time may not know about and that those who lived in that era may or not recall or know all the details. Folks interested in U.S. history, especially the 20th century will want to pick this one up.
If you were around and/or remember those horror paperbacks from the 1970s and 1980s and their art covers, this is the book for you to go down memory lane. This was a fun book to read, and it even made me want to go and find some of the titles highlighted.
The author of this books takes us on a journey to follow a kilo of cocaine from the field in Colombia where it was harvested to it being smuggled out of Colombia. Along the way we meet those involved from farmers to drug dealers to drug lords to various members of law enforcement.
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